5 Benefits of Good Sleep and How to Get It

Having a long night with no sleep and being able to crawl out of bed early in the morning is not an easy feat. Even though you have a great bed with king size bed dimensions, you can still have restless nights. Restless nights can cause havoc to the body and can leave you feeling irritated, powerless, and, of course, tired. Because of this, we often look towards caffeine to help us start our day before being able to crawl back into bed at night.

On the flip side though, being able to get those full eight to nine hours of sleep is able to provide you with many benefits which can help you tackle any daily challenge. Similar to needing to maintain a nice diet and exercising often, your sleep routine is a crucial piece of being able to maintain your healthy lifestyle. We will focus on five benefits of good sleep and how you can get that sleep every night.

1. Receive a Concentration and Awareness Boost

Keeping your energy up is a major part of getting sufficient sleep. It can also assist with your concentration and awareness so that your entire day remains productive.

Failing to get proper sleep often leads to poor functioning of the brain and body. It can also reduce your ability to react, make assessments, and think strategically. This can lead to catastrophic outcomes if you are planning to drive or need to make important decisions.

2. Allows Your Mind to Process

Besides enabling the body to rebuild while resting, sleep can also benefit the mind. While sleeping, your mind is able to process and sort your daily activity. All of the short-term memories also become a part of your long-term memory. It is during this sorting that we are able to learn and understand the way things are after waking up.

3. Aids With Weight Control

Getting little sleep can create difficulties when appetite is concerned and could create an increase in weight. By sleeping poorly, the body will require an increased amount of energy due to being awake for a lengthy period of time. It is also believed that sleep deprivation could alter hormones responsible for feeling hungry and full. This could possibly cause you to consume food items that are not good for you, as well as eating more than you should throughout the day. As you sleep, you achieve a good amount of body regulation as your body transforms food into energy.

4. Sleep Maintains a Strong Cardiovascular System

A decreased amount of sleep can cause you to develop a higher risk for heart disease and elevated blood pressure. It is believed that when you awaken often, that your cardiovascular system is stimulated by the sympathetic nervous system. This stimulation is believed to cause the increase in blood pressure needed to awaken. When you awaken frequently, there is no way for compensation to be achieved by the body thus remaining high for an extended period of time. Because of a constant increase in blood pressure, there is also a possibility for strokes or heart attacks to occur.

Besides that, a decrease in sleep also has a connection to the body’s resistance and regulation of insulin. Because of the regulation of the insulin hormone, your body needs adequate sleep in order to keep the blood sugar level in check. By having decreased sleep, your body’s regulating ability gets compromised, which can cause blood sugar to rise, thus developing diabetes. This is why having an adequate amount of sleep can benefit your overall heart health.

5. Maintain a Healthy Immune System

Maintaining a normal sleep pattern can easily help your immune system to keep fighting off bacteria and germs. As your body gets attacked by the bad bugs, it repairs itself and fights them off more while you are sleeping. This is why you feel unusually tired while feeling sick. With sleep, it also provides support to the cells so they can easily search for the bad bacteria so that it can be flushed from your system. Sleeping also helps your cells to recall the bad stuff if they come across it another time and be able to know how to destroy them. But this can only occur when you have a good night’s sleep for you to have a stronger response from your immune system. Plus, you get some extra sleep, which is always good.